When I think of mushroom picking it creates romantic images of skipping through the forest, with basket over arm, collecting wild mushrooms and returning to a hill side cabin to cook them up in the most delicious of ways. My imagination obviously leans toward European foraging…

The Blue Mountains from Mt Tomah Botanic Gardens

Recently I spent a polka dot filled weekend in the Blue Mountains (NSW) with my husband, Dave. Dave is an ideas man, but not only does he have the ideas he follows through and makes those ideas come to life. It’s very exciting to be me (sometimes – depends on the idea!)… and this time the idea was mushroom picking in a pine forest which we did near Oberon, west of the Blue Mountains.

Dave did all the research required including what mushrooms would be growing, what mushrooms to avoid, where they were growing and how to find them. So we set out from Leura after a spot of shopping (Yay! that was my idea) to find a pine forest that would yield us our mushrooms.

Foraging and finding – perfect!

The mushrooms that we were looking for were wild mushrooms, in our case Saffron Milk Caps. They can be found in pine forests from late February to early May. We drove looking for Hampton State Forest – persistence is the key here. After driving for what felt like ‘too long’ we came across the odd cluster of pine trees, then some more clusters of pine trees. These were either too difficult to get to or didn’t have any mushrooms. So we kept driving and there it was, football field after football field sized areas of stumps. The loggers had been and there were no trees in sight. But, we didn’t give up, we kept driving until on the not too distant horizon we could see the tips of more, lots more trees, enough pine trees to be called a forest. And that is exactly what we were looking for.

Careful does it. Once you have cut the stem you cover the part that is left in the ground with pine needles, that way you encourage the mushroom to shoot again next year.

I should mention here that there was no skipping, only precarious foot steps to avoid treading on pine needle obscured mushrooms or running into a spider’s web (I didn’t want to disturb any of the wild life either). There was no basket (because I forgot to bring it – shame on me and my mushroom foraging), but we did have, you guessed it, recycled paper mushroom bags, the ones we all know and love. There was however a hillside cabin to return to, but no cooking, we waited until we were in our own kitchen (to keel over and pass out…) to cook them.

Two for one!!!

Even though Dave had done the research I was still a little concerned that we were picking wild mushrooms. When the first one went into the bag I remember saying to him, ‘don’t lick your hands or smell you hands or put them near your face and don’t eat any!’ The look of response on his face was mixed. It said ‘don’t you trust me’ and ‘how bloody stupid do you think I am?’

All up we collected about two bags worth of mushrooms to take home, that was plenty for the two of us.

Mushroom foraging success.

The mushrooms travelled back to Sydney with us where Dave cooked up a pot of soup. I have to be honest the images crossing my mind of newspaper headlines containing my name very close to the words fatal and mushroom did not help my wild mushroom soup go down. I tried but there was a very definite divide within my brain, ‘it’s totally fine – we’ve done the research’ and ‘it’s oh so not fine – we’ve never done this before’. Even after each mouthful Dave had, I asked if he was ok.

Wild mushroom soup. It’s orange due to the bright orange sap that seeps out of the cut end of the mushroom.

Even while eating the soup I kept searching the internet for things that would ease my mind. But it wasn’t very ‘eased’ when Deathcap Mushroom came up in a Google search.

Sadly I didn’t finish my soup, as I write this it sits waiting in my fridge at home. And that brings up a whole other concern, ‘should you keep wild mushroom soup?’, ‘will mushrooms that have been cooked and stored produce a highly toxic substance that renders them DANGEROUS???’. Reasonable or unreasonable, I’m not too sure!

Now here comes the warning…

I cannot stress to you enough that you should never, ever eat wild mushrooms unless you are 100% certain that you know what the mushroom is and that it is non toxic and suitable for eating. Some mushrooms are highly poisonous and eating them could be fatal. If you are not sure of the identification of the mushroom, don’t touch them, leave them where they are. A leaflet and directions are available from the Oberon Visitor Information Centre.

Dave and I survived… of course we survived, we had done the research and knew exactly what we were picking and eating. When there was any doubt as to the identification of a mushroom we left it alone. As they say, it is better to be safe than sorry.

We know the cooler weather is upon us when the local garden-centre shop is filled with an assortment of spring flowering bulbs in an array of flowers and colours. The excitement and anticipation of the colours and arrangements that can be created in our gardens is wondrous.

Ambition is the key to success. Right?

If you already know which bulbs you’ll be planting you can go straight for them and get them in your hot ‘green’ hands. For others it is a chance to riffle through the assortment of flowers and colours to choose the ones that tickle their fancy. Ensure that you choose bulbs that will suit the conditions that you can provide.

One day I too will have a pot of red Tulips!!!

Last year I tried my hand at growing both Tulips and Hyacinth flowers, you may remember I wrote a post about it. You can read ‘It’s Bulb Planting Time’here. I was very excited! I chose the bulbs, chilled them, got my pots, asked the husband where the soil was and planted my little bulbs. I had them in a great position on the north side of my house and I lovingly watered and cared for them. You can see where this is going can’t you… Well, don’t get too sad, it’s not all doom and gloom on the bulb front. I was a little disappointed with the result, but I did get some Hyacinth flowers and the scent of them knocked my socks off! I also got to glimpse some tulip leaves, but that’s as far as the tulip story goes.

A spike of perfumed Hyacinth flowers – that I grew.

In my defence I’ve never said I was a master horticulturist, I’ve only ever said I would give it a go, and that is exactly what I encourage you to do too. It’s one thing to know ‘stuff’, it’s another thing to make the ‘stuff’ you do know about gardens work. And that is what I love about gardening. It is seeing past the, what shall we call them… how about ‘the troubles’… seeing past the troubles, making adjustments and learning from the experience. That is what I think gardening is, some people have breathtaking eye-candy results (also known here as Polka Dots) while others plod along anticipating the next attempt.

This was my eye candy.

But I think I know where I went wrong, actually it’s a few little but significant things.… I think it is a problem most of us have created all in the name of making do – it was bulb planting on a budget.

The soil I used was rubbish – in my quest to assemble all that was required to plant my bulbs I was directed to nutrient poor, unstructured soil. Good, nutrient rich soil is something I never skimp on when planting but it seems I inadvertently did so in this case. Don’t worry, I now have a stash of soil that I can put my hot ‘green’ hands on when I need.

Here you can see the beginning of the Hyacinth. This is where is gets exciting.

The second problem was the pots, they just weren’t deep enough and I wasn’t able to plant the bulbs deep enough in the soil. I had a gorgeous little weather worn terracotta pot that I thought my flowering Hyacinth would look spectacular in and it did, this one did flower but it wasn’t very big. A little rustic, a little old world, just scrumptious, but I think the bulbs would have done a whole lot better if the pot was deeper.

Can’t you just imagine a gorgeous Hyacinth emerging out of this weathered terracotta pot?

I have not been deterred. The excitement and anticipation of the coming flowers is such a lovely gardening experience. It’s what gardening dreams are made of.

One open flower and still more to come. Yippee!

So, I encourage you to come along on the bulb growing journey. It’s fun, it’s unexpected and you never know, you may just succeed and have a pot full of eye candy.

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